{"id":513,"date":"2010-02-02T18:30:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T01:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/?p=513"},"modified":"2017-09-13T13:32:24","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T17:32:24","slug":"the-removal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/the-removal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Removal"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday the 22nd, the doctor called and told us that surgery was scheduled for Wednesday January 27 @ 8:15. \u00a0Like the doctor said he was going to go to war with the cancer. \u00a0The surgery changed a little bit to this date. \u00a0The doctor was now going to try and preserve my facial nerve. \u00a0Instead of cutting it and then taking a new nerve and putting it there he was going to protect it. \u00a0Not that big of a change, so I just counted down the minutes to the surgery date.<\/p>\n

I have had too many surgeries for any 24 year old man should ever have had. \u00a0I have gotten two knee surgeries and one on the biopsy of this tumor. \u00a0I was not nervous at all about the knee surgeries. \u00a0I am not sure why but I was not scared of what complications could have happened or the actual process of the surgery. \u00a0The biopsy surgery scared me a little bit because of the location of where it was taking place. \u00a0I was not really worried about the outcome of it because I did not think anything could be wrong. \u00a0This surgery scared the hell out of me. \u00a0I didn’t care if the facial nerve got damaged, or the fact that I was going to lose my hearing in my right ear, but what I was nervous about was what ELSE <\/em>will they find in there. \u00a0Who knows where else this tumor grew? \u00a0It could be spread everywhere. \u00a0I voiced my concern to Chris, one of the nurse practitioners, about the situation. \u00a0He responded by saying we took many, many pictures of it, so we have a great idea of where it is. \u00a0That eased my worries, but still something did not settle well.<\/p>\n

The family and myself left at 5:30 in morning on Wednesday to get to the hospital in the city. \u00a0It is amazing that without traffic it takes about 25 minutes to get into NYC from Ridgewood. \u00a0I got in my gowns and started to get mentally prepared for this operation. \u00a0Everyone in my doctors’ entourage were there to greet me. \u00a0All of his residents and doctors who are right under his wing. \u00a0There are probably around 5 or 6 doctors. \u00a0They told us about going to the tumor board again that morning to discuss what to do. \u00a0Everyone was in high spirits and ready to go to work.<\/p>\n

After this whole trip, I believe that I do not have veins in my body. \u00a0Of course thats not true, but jesus these nurses had so much trouble trying to stick me with a needle. \u00a0I think finally one of them put three tourniquets on me to find a vein. \u00a0I was laying on the operating table and then BOOM!! \u00a0you are waking up in recovery. \u00a0I had no idea what had happened. The first twenty minutes I was vowing to myself that I would never get surgery again, but soon after I actually felt pretty good. The first thing that I noticed was my bite. \u00a0I finally had a normal bite and my teeth aligned with each other. \u00a0Before the surgery my teeth were a little off because of the tumor. \u00a0It is amazing how this simple and minute thing could make me feel sooooo much better. \u00a0I could not really feel my face. \u00a0I could not tell the time. \u00a0I had my pain killer bomb to press. \u00a0I was thinking to myself how I wanted the paper to do my Kakuro. \u00a0Kakuro its like Suduko, but a little different. \u00a0I saw one of the doctors and he told me that the surgery went well. \u00a0 I finally got moved to my own room and got to see my parents. \u00a0I still did not actually know what really happened or how long it was, so that was the first questions I asked my mother. \u00a0The surgery actually took six hours long. \u00a0The reason it took so long was because of how extensive the tumor was. \u00a0Oh Great! My worst fear came true. \u00a0That still did not matter because the doctor was still able to remove the whole thing out of my face. \u00a0WOOHOO!! \u00a0However, he could not preserve the facial nerve, that is gone.<\/p>\n

Now it was just recuperating time. \u00a0I was to stay in the hospital till whenever I can do what a normal person can do. \u00a0The days went by. \u00a0I would get up and move to sit in the chair. \u00a0I would get up to walk around a little. \u00a0Some doctors would come see me and tell me how well I looked and how the scar was looking good. \u00a0Most of my family came to visit me. \u00a0Annie finally got home from Thailand and she spent two days with me. \u00a0There was nothing special about the hospital. \u00a0Annie actually brought me cards that our students in Thailand made for me. \u00a0I steadily progressed day by day. \u00a0The doctors said I could finally go on Monday. \u00a0There was one more thing I still had to do.<\/p>\n

Well, because I lost my facial nerve my face does not work to the best of its ability. \u00a0My eye does not shut completely. \u00a0It is very important for my eye to shut because it protects the cornia of the eye. \u00a0Here was the doctors’ plan. \u00a0The doctor was going to make a slit in my eye lid and put a small little gold weight there to make the lid close all the way. \u00a0This was one more procedure for me to go through and then I was able to head home. \u00a0On Monday morning we got discharged from the hospital and off we went to the next building for the eye weight. \u00a0I was not put under so that made me happy. \u00a0The docs numbed up my eyelid and started to get to work. \u00a0After about 15 minutes it was all done. \u00a0I finally got to leave NYC and head home. \u00a0Thank god.<\/p>\n

This is the first step of this long, long journey, but so far so good. \u00a0The tumor is gone and thats ALL that matters. \u00a0I will rest up for the next 2 to 3 weeks and get mentally prepared for my next challenge that life has handed to me. Here are some up pictures of my fresh battle wounds. \u00a0One pic is of the scar on my face. \u00a0One is of the cut on my eye lid. \u00a0One is the pic of my stomach of where they took some fat for my face.<\/p>\n

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On Friday the 22nd, the doctor called and told us that surgery was scheduled for Wednesday January 27 @ 8:15. \u00a0Like the doctor said he was going to go to war with the cancer. \u00a0The surgery changed a little bit to this date. \u00a0The doctor was now going to try and preserve my facial nerve. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[57],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-cancer"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=513"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":818,"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/513\/revisions\/818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allaboutmatt.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}